The Right Thing in a Sea of Wrongs
by IfUKnewUCouldNotFail
Summary: My response to that mega episode, 2x09 Uneasy Lies the Head.


A/N: Hi everyone! What an episode, right!? They sure brought the Tom/Rachel drama this time! (Finally!) And provided us writers sure quality fic fuel, my results are as follows… ;-D

 **Warning: MASSIVE spoilers for episode nine, and also the promo for episode 10.**

LSLSLS

"Niels is dead…Doctor Scott killed him."

As his XO relayed his little bombshell of factoids with about as much inflection and interest as one would use talking about the weather, it took Tom a second before the complete gravitas of the other man's lackluster announcement finally struck him. But when it did it hit with the force of a Mack truck. Tom stopped dead in his tracks, spun around to face the other man and responded with the only thing he could think of right now. The single word that was repeating in his brain at what seemed like an ear splitting decibel level.

"WHAT?!" Tom aimed his XO with a look that he knew was more dumbstruck than the confidently commanding visage he was generally always trying to go for. Still seemingly completely at ease with the monumental news he was delivering, he watched as Mike took his shocked utterance as a serious question and proceeded to answer it.

"She killed him, in the Lab, I've just come from there."

"Deliberately?!" He new he more spluttered the words than anything else but to say he was shocked would be the understatement of the century, and considering some of the recent events this century… Then he thought about it more, and a shiver raced down his spine as he considered a viable reason she may have acted…acting for her life. "Did Niels attack her? Is she hurt?" _'Please no…'_ _'You forced her in there with him.' 'You did this!'_ His mind taunted.

But Mike shook his head. "The doc's fine, physically at least. Niels didn't attack her."

At first Tom let himself breath a small sign of relieve at the knowledge that Dr Scott was unharmed… _physically at least_ …but then he thought further. If Niels didn't threaten her in any way then there was no justifiable reason for her to have done this.

Maybe…

"Was it an accident? Did something go wrong in the lab?" His eyes practically screamed; ' _Any reason or explanation other than the willful revenge motivated murder! Please!'_

Mike sighed, he could see his rigidly by the book, morally black and white, friend was going to have a _whole lot_ more trouble with this than pretty much _every_ other member of the crew...he's passed delighted smiles on his way here! _The Nathan James grapevine sure did move fast..._ And he would swear he had seen hero worship on the faces of Miller and O'Connor who had actually witnessed the event.

Mike proceeded with his debrief, pretending as if unaware of his Captains inner turmoil. _'Give him time.'_ "When she was briefing, slash confessing, to me, her countenance didn't exactly strike me as that of someone who thought they had acted in error in any way…far from it actually." He delivered the final hammer; the one he knew Tom had been hoping against hope against hope would not drop.

Again Tom watched Mike deliver his news with such a complete lack of expression, that it leant his entire present circumstances a surreal quality that had Tom wondering for a second if he had sustained a knock to the head in the fight and he really was just imagining this whole fantastical conversation.

Tom looked away as if considering the news, and he was, but he was also trying to ascertain if he was hallucinating. _'Let this not be real, I need her with me, I can't lose her, and lose her to this!'_ As he glanced around him at the very real looking hanger, as he failed to notice the slightest evidence to his person that could signify injury or affect, he was forced to come to the conclusion that this was real. He returned his focus to his friend as he continued his debrief.

"The good news is she's done it." For the first time Tom heard Mike inject some actual emotion into his words, positive for this announcement, and effectively moving on from the apparently unremarkable news of their resident doctor murdering their prisoner…

"Don't ask me exactly what she's done and definitely don't ask me how, even though she did tell me both. But the cliff notes, as I understood them, are that she has successfully found a way to mass immunize people with absolutely no infrastructure required to do it. Everything she needs to do now can be done from the ship now she says." Mike actually smiled. He really hoped Tom could focus on this positive side of events. _It was a damn big positive after all…_

Ok, that _did_ sound like good news, Tom could admit, to himself… But it was more than slightly confusing news too… "But we will still need planes to spread her powder, and then there's the mass manufacture of it?" Tom did _not_ like this feeling of being ten steps behind on his own boat! How had so much changed _so_ quietly and in such a short expanse of time.

"No planes, no powder, no manufacturing. She found another way she says, a better way. Certainly sounds better to me if it means we don't have to do anything." Mike intoned simply, he was a simple man for the most part and the only important key facts in his mind were pretty damn simple right now…and they were good! _Finally_ good!

But Mike also knew that that was part of the reason he was _not_ the one wearing the Captain's hat. He knew the Nathan James' always fiercely by the Goddamn book _actual_ Captain would devote (waste…) far more time and mental energy on other less important facts of this incident than he would given the highly individual and in his opinion, immediately justifiable, circumstances.

What Mike was saying did sound good, very good, almost too good to be true… But try as he might to put his focus where Mike very much seemed to be deliberately trying to lead it, he just kept coming back to the massive and morality shaking piece news that Mike had dropped.

"And what? She got what she needed from Niels so she just _killed him?!"_ Why was he the only one disturbed about that apparent reality?

"Not quite, Sir." For the first time Mike looked slightly uncomfortable in his retelling of events, and Tom not for the first time wondered what he hell had gone down in that lab. He watched on as Mike seemed to gather himself from his momentary micro-slip and continue. "She didn't kill Niels _after_ she got what she needed from him, she killed him in order _to get_ what she needed from him." He clarified.

"To _get it_? _How_?" Now Tom was utterly confused, how the hell did killing the man help them when she was supposed to be working with him to get the information locked in his damn head?!

Slattery answered without missing a beat this time, seemingly happy to have a question he could answer…semi-easily. "I don't think its exactly accurate but the 'for idiots only' explanation that I finally wheedled out of her was that she changed the original highly contagious version of the virus inside of Niels into a highly contagious _cure_ for the virus… _while inside him_ , which was apparently the only viable way to do it. As I understand it the process was… _unpleasant_ …ultimately fatal for Niels, but also successful." He finished his story on the high note, attempting to ignore the deliberate and bloody killing in the story in the completely vain hope that Tom would too.

" _He agreed to that_?" Even as he spoke, Tom knew the answer to his ridiculous question. The man wouldn't have sacrificed the possibility of losing a fingernail to help anyone but himself.

Mike could prevent the grunt that rose from him at that. "Hardly, to hear O'Connor and Miller tell it, it all went down like the ending to any number of evil villain movies. Apparently Niels was acting like he was the one in total control almost right till the very end, like he had the Doc eating out of the palm of his hand. And then she swiftly turned the tables on him giving him giving him all of minute to realize his folly before meeting him very timely end." He gave sardonic smile relaying the young soldiers glamorized view of events, what he wouldn't given to have seen it really go down himself… Probably not a good idea but. If he was going to have any chance at all of _eventually_ talking Tom down from the _technically_ correct actions and judgment's he knew the other man was considering, it would be by playing the fellow impartial outside observer too. When in truth he was anything but. _'Ding dong, the bastards dead.'_ Was the jubilant phrase repeating in his own mind.

Tom took that information in. Of course, he had ordered O'Connor and Miller to not let Niels out of their sight, they would have seen and maybe even heard it all. He would definitely be talking to them…soon, but there was definitely someone on his list first.

"So I take it they're as undisturbed as you seem to be about what she did?" Tom leveled the question he had already clearly read the answer too between the lines of his friends words.

"Yep. And they saw her do it. In fact I'm pretty sure she's gone way up in their estimations, and they were both pretty big fans before." Mike answered matter of factly. _'Please let him understand what that means, we **cannot** have the crew turn against us again. Not **now** … Not over **this**!'_ Mike willed the other man silently.

Tom knew that, knew they were strong supporters of Rachel… _not that they were alone._ Both men had volunteered for her trials, and Miller had been chosen to be amongst the six. Even after he nearly died he was still firmly in the Doc's camp. Frankly it was not like he should have expected any differently. Tom had chosen them to guard Niels, knowing that he had asked _'You mean emotionally blackmailed?'_ his mind unhelpfully supplied, Rachel into working with the man. He had wanted people who would fiercely guard her against the prisoner they were also guarding... At the time it hadn't occurred to him to make sure their prisoner was protected from Rachel too!

Tom took a long breath, trying to center himself in a world that had just significantly tilted as far as he was concerned. _'She **killed** him.. **.deliberately**.' _ He couldn't believe it, and yet he could. A memory struck him. The last time he had seen her had been just a couple of hours ago, just after he had returned to the ship. He had just been dropping by to check on her progress. And maybe a little bit on her wellbeing, he _did_ feel bad for the dirty tactics he had used to get her to agree to his wishes.

But she had been…swirly. He hadn't thought much of it at the time, put it down to having to work with Niels. The man had given him the creeps and he'd only been ten minutes in the same room with him. He had also been in a hurry to make a meeting the President had called. _The first one the man had ever called!_ At the time he had been mentally preoccupied with that, he had hoped it meant the man had made progress while he had been otherwise occupied, and he'd been right.

But now that he thought about it more, and put it together in context, something about that quick encounter had been very _off_. Something about _Rachel_ had been very off. When he had first walked in and made his presence known, now that he thought about it, her expression at the time reminded him off one of his kids after being caught with there hands in the cookie jar. And her responses to him had been off too, too considered, too deliberately vague. All except her offer of condolences for the boy that was lost, that was genuine and frankly a big part of the reason the rest of her words stuck out so starkly as being cut from a different cloth…a deceptive one.

'On the verge of a major breakthrough' she had said. Tom cursed internally at all the clues that he had failed to heed. The red flags had been very much in evidence but he had ignored them. She couldn't have done what she'd claimed to have done without preparation and planning. He hadn't even been to the lab, hadn't even looked in her eyes yet. But still, he knew enough to know this act had been no temporary loss of control but a very deliberate and premeditated one.

It was now very clear that at that last encounter of theirs, hell even before that! Maybe even when she came to them to ask for the damn muscles, that she already had her end game planned. She was probably preparing whatever it was that she used to kill him, that's why she looked so damn guilty when he came in, and relieved when he proved to be a clueless idiot as to her true plans.

And it all begged the question, what the hell was he going to do with her now? Punish her crime and lose her and possibly the loyalty of his crew? Or reward murder on his ship? He had no good options open to him. And it was Doctor Rachel Scott that had put him in this untenable situation…again!

LSLSLS

A/N: If I lose time or my mojo, this could stand alone as an episode tag but I do have at least another part planned and partially written (Tom and Rachel of course!) and I really want to try and keep going with this. I just really hope the next episode doesn't kick the filling out of me because I am pretty sure I am going to take this in a very different direction than the show. And I also admit that I have hurried this chapter a bit so excuse any errors. I just really wanted to get at least this part of it up before the next episode, as this is highly likely to be my last opportunity to do so. This week had proved to be absolutely **mad**!

Anyway, this is my idea for how to start the next chapter…

 _The teddy bear._

 _That's how he found her. Standing in the middle of her screened off lab, staring down at her blood drenched handiwork…clutching a teddy bear._

As usual, would love to hear what you think! :-D


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